Dear Future President,

College tuition is increasing more and more every year. Those currently enrolled or planning to enroll must prepare to face massive amounts of student loan debt that will remain looming over them for many years. Being that there is an increasing number of people planning to attend college in the future, this problem must be recognized and fixed as soon as possible to ensure that the country retains its promise of affordable higher education and equal opportunity.

Mike Patton’s article in Forbes magazine talks about Bernie Sanders’ method that would impose more taxes on Wall Street in order to fund more colleges and thus decreasing tuition costs. However, there is a way to decrease tuition without more taxes, and that is through cooperation between public education institutions and the government. This includes incorporating more online classes into colleges, making better use of facilities, and reducing textbook prices. If classes can be converted to online courses, universities can make more use of classrooms, utilizing all their facilities and thus decreasing the total cost of tuition there.

Lynn O'Shaughnessy proposed another way to lowering the cost of going to college by incorporating three year bachelor’s degree programs, which are popular in Europe. Who’s to say that a bachelor’s degree must be done in four years? Bringing these programs to the U.S. would mean that students will graduate faster and spend less money on housing and food. In a similar fashion, we can bring more college classes into the high school, granting students the ability to gain college credit in high school, this includes Advanced Placement classes, International Baccalaureate programs, and community college courses. These programs, combined with the three year degree programs will lead to a much faster college education.

It is the government’s, and therefore your responsibility as the president, to make sure that everything possible is done to make college more affordable to all Americans. In order to maintain a country where the government protects the common good of its people, higher education needs to be made more easily attained.

Sincerely,

Trenton B